Kostitz Castle (Saar)
Costitz Castle is a novella by the Austrian writer Ferdinand von Saar . It was created in 1892 .
content
The Freiherr von Günthersheim retires with his much younger wife to his country estate. The opposition to Metternich's reactionary policies and his sympathy with the revolution of 1848 had urged him to leave the civil service. Today's politics catches up with him when a dragoon regiment , whose border move heralds the approaching conflict with Prussia , is moved to the neighboring village and the cavalry quartered in the castle. The story came to a head when Count Poiga-Reuhoff, who was in charge of the mounted men, approaches the baron's young wife, Klothilde. Although she does not succumb to the count's advances, she is nevertheless unable to escape the self-reproaches of not having put up a resolute defense.
The "habitual roué" (440) received the marching orders the next day, but Klothilde's gnawing remorse broke out as " typhus ", with which the intrusive count probably infected her "as a souvenir" (452). Klothilde dies, but the novella gives a brief overview of Günthersheim's twilight years and the continued use of the Kostenitz Castle - and thus becomes a parable on transitoriness:
After Günthersheim's death, the castle, which was to become a serene retirement home, then the widow's seat of the younger baroness and a place of grief and death for both, became the property of the nearby community, but with the condition that it would not be inhabited for twenty-five years. At the end of this period, the municipality then sold the property to an industrialist who had it modernized and gradually removed everything that was once worth to the long-forgotten previous owners as kitsch and confusion.
based on: Ferdinand von Saar, Requiem der Liebe and other short stories ; ed. v. Hans-Heinrich Reuter, Bremen 1958
Award
The novella is one of 180 German-language stories that Marcel Reich-Ranicki included in his Der Kanon collection .